Read Faerie Path #6: The Charmed Return for Free Online Page B

grass.
    “Yes.”
    Jade stood behind her. Anita felt her hand moving slowly over her head, feeling for anything unusual.
    “Well?” Anita asked, staring straight ahead.
    “No bumps. No lumps.” Jade sounded puzzled. “This just keeps getting weirder by the second. Why would your mum tell me you’ve had a bash on the head if you haven’t?”
    “To cover up for something too weird to tell you about?” Anita suggested, craning around to look up at her friend. “Are you freaked out yet?”
    Jade shook her head. “I don’t freak out that easily. Let’s just say I’m intrigued with a side order of slightly spooked.”
    Anita got up. “I need something else to drink. I have the foulest taste in my mouth.” She was halfway to her feet when the jangling music came crashing into her head again. Louder this time, dissonant, grating—clashing and strident. She staggered at the shock of it. Through the cacophony she could just about hear Jade’s voice shouting words she couldn’t make out.
    The air thrummed, the laurel trees rippling as if they were reflections in troubled water. The grass seethed under her feet. The flowers in the beds bled into one another till all the different colors became a single rainbow swirl. Shards of silvery blue light skidded on the stones over the pond. The wound of dark blue light appeared again, throbbing in the air, pulsing and darkening and becoming more solid.
    The terrible music grew even louder, coming to a crescendo of screaming strings and clashing cymbals and blaring trumpets. A silvery line cut down through the heart of the dark blue blemish that hung over the stones. A thin line that sparked and flared and opened.
    Through the widening gap Anita caught the briefest possible glimpse of a shingled shoreline and a cobalt sea that stretched away to the horizon. There was a galleon—an old-fashioned, fully rigged galleon! A huge, white lizard reached forward with raking claws.
    Two figures blocked the light: one male, the other female. They came tumbling through the gaping silver-lipped portal, plunging headlong into the pond, sending up a fountain of greenish water.
    The fire-rimmed mouth closed. The dark blue stain winked out of existence, and the music stopped abruptly, as though someone had thrown a switch.
    “No . . .” It was Jade’s voice, strangely loud in the sudden silence. “No . . . this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening. . . .”
    The two figures scrambled to their feet, water flooding off their clothes as they stared wildly around themselves.
    One was a girl, a dark-haired beauty in an old-fashioned olive green dress. The other was . . .
    The other was Evan !
    But he was wearing the weirdest clothes: a strange black tunic and leather boots, like someone in a Shakespeare play. Like Romeo.
    “Forsooth!” gasped the girl, floundering to the edge of the pool. “Your powers are formidable indeed, Master Chanticleer! But I’d fain travel a less hectic path in the future and mayhap arrive dry-shod!”
    “No. Way. No. Way. No. Way.” Jade backed away, shaking her head.
    Anita took a stumbling step forward. “Evan?”
    Evan Thomas was knee-deep in the pond, gazing at her, his fair hair hanging wet in his silvery eyes.
    Silvery eyes? No! Evan’s eyes were brown! But . . .
    The girl stepped out of the water, a slow grin spreading across her face as she opened her arms.
    “Come, Tania!” she cried, her eyes shining. “Look not so moonstruck! We are neither apparitions nor flibbertigibbets! By Master Chanticleer’s Arts we have come across entire worlds for you! Come, my sweet, darling sister—embrace me and tell me all that you learned in the airy realm of Tirnanog!”

Chapter VI
    “Get away from me!” Anita’s terrified shout cut the air like a blade.
    The dark-haired girl stumbled to a halt, astonished.
    “Tania? Do you not know me?”
    Anita stood her ground, but she was trembling from head to foot.
    This isn’t real. It’s all in